MANILA, Philippines – The camp of Vice President Leni Robredo on Tuesday said that former Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos should not give out “wrong and self-serving information for political reasons” like claiming that data in unused secure digital (SD) cards is evidence of “massive electoral fraud” in the May 2016 elections.
Lawyer Romulo Macalintal, lead counsel for Robredo, said the Marcos camp obviously doesn't understand the process for election protests involving automated elections.
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“The data from some of these 13 SD cards have not yet been decrypted, meaning they are still in encrypted form and have not yet been converted to its original form for an ordinary layman to understand their full contents,” Macalintal explained in a statement released to reporters.
“The camp of Marcos must have a bionic mind or bionic eyes to be able to read these encrypted data and immediately claim that there were electoral frauds committed in the said election,” he added.
READ: Marcos: SD card data proves poll fraud
Marcos' legal team, headed by lawyer Victor Rodriguez, claimed Monday that there had been fraud in the recent elections because the supposedly unused SD cards contained folders and data.
Rodriguez questioned the folders and data in the SD cards saying the cards should be empty since they came from vote counting machine kits that were not used.
Macalintal, speaking for Robredo, pointed out that the unused VCMs were not even part of Marcos’ protest and that could not be used as evidence.
The vice president's camp asserted that the votes that they received were legitimate and no electoral fraud was committed.
“We stand by our position that all the votes cast for and received by Robredo were valid votes and we are confident that the results of the verification and examination of the ballots will confirm her victory and the defeat of Marcos in the last election,” Macalintal said.
READ: PET ignores Bongbong plea to preserve VCMs
Macalintal also schooled the Marcos camp on how the election protest would be handled by the Supreme Court sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.
“They should remember that an election protest is not decided on the basis of SD cards but the ballots actually cast in the VCMs with the results compared with the election returns, statement of votes, and other election documents,” the lawyer said.
“An election protest is not won on mere press statements or media releases but based on solid and hard evidence presented before the courts or electoral tribunal,” Macalintal added.
He also hit the Marcos camp for indirectly influencing Filipinos and the court of “non-existing, speculative and scattershot evidence of alleged massive fraud” even if the PET has not been presented a single ballot.
READ: Marcos camp to SC: Order Comelec to show contents of ‘unused’ SD cards
“If they cannot respect the court, they should at least respect the electorate and the entire Filipino people by not feeding them with wrong and self-serving information for political reason. It is indeed ridiculous if not total frivolous for Marcos camp to make such a wide and speculative claim of massive fraud.
The Marcos camp earlier contested the stripping of the unused VCMs, however, the PET sided with Comelec when the poll body explained that they do not contain election results since they only served as contingency machines during the elections.